The gender gap in mobile phone use is the subject of a new report by the GSMA, an association of nearly 800 mobile operators worldwide. Its investigation found women were on average 14 percent less likely to own a phone than men in 11 low- and middle-income countries.

To put that in other terms: 200 million fewer women than men in these countries don’t own phones. And when they do, they use them less than men.

In this respect, mobile tech has the potential to address broader gender inequalities. For example, the report notes that “In all countries, at least 64 percent of working women say they have (or would have) greater access to business and employment opportunities because of mobile.”

So why are women falling behind? The main barrier is pretty obvious: cost. The men and women surveyed in most of the countries said that the cost of a phone handset was the biggest barrier for adoption among women, with the cost of phone credit also up there. In all countries, this was reported as a much bigger barrier than lacking technical literacy.

Why is that a gendered issue? Quite simply, women don’t tend to have as much income or financial autonomy in these countries.

By utilizing ‘mobile manufacturing apparatuses Amazon would be able to send an STL file to a mobile unit that’s closest to a customer, providing it with instructions to print out an item which was ordered. When the item has been completed, it could then be within miles of the customer who ordered it and quickly delivered or picked up.

The mobile hubs, according to the patent filing, would include a means to both additively and subtractively manufacture an item. This could include a number of different 3D printing technologies as well as CNC machining tools, which would ultimately reduce Amazon’s reliance on warehouse space as well as the robots and employees needed to sort through these stored items.